Showing posts with label The media (sigh). Show all posts
Showing posts with label The media (sigh). Show all posts

Feb 27, 2010

Tsunami Reports

Putting together reports from my electric teevee and a bunch of internet sources, it looks as though my old Pago Pago stomping grounds escaped anything too damaging.

It's strange for an old wind-in-the-hair reporter to be feeling so connected, so cyber-something. We used to travel with pockets full of dimes and five-dollar bills. The dimes worked the pay phones. The fives paid kids to hog the booths for us until we were ready to file on breaking stuff. That was considered clever communication.

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I can't resist noting the undisguisable hint of disappointment apparent in the tone of MSNBC news creatures who pointed cameras at a Diamond Head beach for hours and hours and were rewarded with about out the same level of hydraulic excitement you'd get tossing Al Franken into a swimming pool.






Feb 15, 2010

Re-registering disgust


The wires are reporting that the woman accused of being the Huntsville shooter owned a gun which was not registered. Perhaps a future rehash will add that there's no reason on earth it should be. Alabama has overlooked the pressing humanitarian need to register rifles, pistols, or handguns.

Imagine the comfort that would come from knowing that the murder weapon was officially recognized.


Feb 8, 2010

Jocko's Doc

(sigh)

We could save a lot of ink and air time and general exasperation among the literate classes by suspending the relevant Constitutional provisions for 30 minutes, declaring him guilty by acclamation, fining him 50 bucks, and handing him a carton of Luckies on his way down the court house steps. When the Founding Document is restored, leaders should talk up the stuff against double jeopardy.




Jan 21, 2010

BusinessWeak says ... (with multiple choice quiz)

"Big Shots Go Down at Gun Show."

See, "big shot," "gun show." Clever play on words. Get it? Huh? Get it?

It's a quick and dirty report from the SHOT Show which in vintage wire-service speak might be called "a short book," meaning a couple hundred words or less on a story that could be ignored but which some editor decided deserved a mention.

This one hit BusinessWeek because of the FBI sting that corralled the SW sales veep along with about 20 others for bribery of an African, otherwise known as doing business in Africa. BusinessWeek seemed to agree with the feds that it would be just cuter than a baby monkey to make the actual pinches at the big industry trade show.


The piece also included the word we've been breathlessly awaiting, gun sales are down a little from the (pick one):

(a) 2008-2009 panic buying by mouth breathing rednecks driving rusty pickups with Confederate flags and hounds with fleas and ticks.

(b) elevated 2008-2009 sales level due to citizens who, fearing the new and more authoritarian government might decide that the Second Amendment was obsolete, chose prudently to equip themselves for whatever eventualities might occur.


Jan 7, 2010

Mass. follies

I try not to write too much here about routine politics, especially meaningless endorsements, but once in a while something makes me grin or grimace enough to pass it along.

The scene: Peoples Republic of Massachusetts, today.

The live players: Two rich statist and antigun lawyers: Martha Coakley and Vicki Kennedy. The former is running for the spectre's senate seat. See below.

The spectre: Former free diver Ted Kennedy, former husband of Vicki.

The line: Vicki emotes that Martha Coakley will go to Washington to help pass more national health care because: "Health care is the moral issue of our times."

The response: No, dammit, Vicki. Health care is the control issue of our times.

MSNBC played this like a breaking news story of monumental import. WTF did MSNBC think Vicki would back? WTF at that network thinks anyone who didn't already know could give a sweet rat's behind?







Dec 24, 2009

The Most Awesomest News Reporting Ever Award

That's the subject line on email from a friend who happens to be one of the sane toilers in the MSM. The substance is from an early Des Moines Register lead on the current storm of our imminent doom:


...and just how bad is it going to be?

"It's going to be pretty bad," said ... a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Dec 22, 2009

The media, part (mumble dozen)

AP real estate writer Alan Zibel tell us this morning that homes sales "surged" last month, "reflecting an extraordinary level of federal support that has pulled the housing market back from the worst downturn since the Great Depression."

Not quite, Al, and your own choice of words suggests the contradiction.

"Federal support " of a "market" is a serious oxymoron. Governments may disrupt markets, or distort them, or end them altogether. If fact, governments often do. But markets either support themselves or they are something other than markets.

This federal support you cite reflects the will of federal regulators who decide which citizens may or may not receive mortgages with which to buy homes. The same gaggle also decides what homes are worth in dollars, largely by controlling the current and expected value of the currency .

One proper lead (there are others, of course) could have been written thusly: "Home transfers rose in November as unprecedented federal spending further eroded confidence in the American dollar, accelerating the flight from the greenback to tangible assets."

You'd need a little evidence to back that up, but God knows it isn't hard to find.


Dec 13, 2009

Killing Police Officers

AP Reporter Colleen Long , our reporter of the Times Square Maching Pistol, has another gun-related story on the national wires. After a colorful and apparently accurate lead recalling several fatal shootings of police officers she writes: " Across the nation, 2009 was a particularly perilous year for officers involved in gun disputes."

Her basis for the headline grabbing claim is a "24 per cent increase" in police slayings through early December 2009 compared to the same 2008 period -- 47 officers killed this year against 38 last.

The numbers are apparently correct, but she slips into that muddy junction linking small-number statistics to general conclusions. For instance, one way to have written the same thing would say the marginal number of officers (9) killed in 2009 versus 2008 amounted to (decimal) .000001 for the 900,000 officers in the nation, far less dramatic, of course, than a 24 per cent increase.

There should be a slightly warmer corner of Hell reserved for thugs who shoot honest and decent cops, but officers dying in the line of duty is not an argument for general gun grabbing. To be fair, Coleen doesn't make that argument, although she does write: "The availability of guns compounds the problem, criminologists say," failing, however, quote any actual criminologists on the matter.

An impulse to balance takes hold, however. Colleen immediately goes on to note that Pennsylvania, with laws Sarah Brady loves, has more police killings than the redneck places Sarah hates.

One paragraph approaches the meat of the argument: "Contributing to this year's spike are cases in which several officers were shot and killed in groups — the four officers last month outside Seattle; the four officers in Oakland, Calif., in March; three officers in Pittsburgh in April; and two officers in Okaloosa County, Fla., in April."

Yes indeedy. To wit:

--The four Lakewood officers were killed by a professional criminal turned loose from a 108-year prison sentence by a fellow named Mike Huckabee, R-Ark.

--The four Oakdale officers were gunned down by another parolee.

--The Pittsburgh killer of three cops had domestic abuse related non-contact order against him and was booted from the Marine Corps after just three weeks for, his friends say, assaulting a sergeant. The Marines won't specify the kind, but the friends say it was a dishonorable discharge.

Keeping track? That accounts for 11 of the 2009 deaths, two more than were required for Coleen's "24 per cent increase." And at least eight of those, possibly all 11, were killed by men clearly barred from firearms use by the laws of every state in the union and by the the federal government.

I offer this lengthy set of observations for your convenience, useful the first time you hear the AP story quoted as justification for some new weapons ban.